by Sid from the S.E.A

     At the Production Show in March a seminar was held on promotional videos. I was interested (as well as being involved with the Sonic Energy Authority), as someone I vaguely knew when I was at school made Chumbawumba's 'Tub Thumping' promo'. The three seekers, (unfortunately the address system was quiet to cut out feedback, so I didn't catch their names), represented Sony Music, Oil Factory Productions and MTV.

     First came a show-reel from Sony with clips from videos from The Lightning Seeds, Jimmy Ray, Apollo 440, Manic Street Preachers, Finlay Quay, Reef and Jamiroquai. The last, he said, helped that band sell 1 million albums in the U.S.A., remaining 6 weeks in the play-list, finally breaking the band into that market.

     When asked how much he would spend on a video, he replied it could be anywhere between 10 to 250 thousand pounds, with the average price being 40K.

     Next the representative of Oil Factory Productions played his companies show-reel. He said that a video was intended to aid the audiences' perception of the artist. The clips included Oasis, Shirley Bassy, Propeller Head, Texas, Let Loose, Iain Brown, Dodgy, Robbie Williams, No Doubt, Spice Girls, David Bowie, Chemical Brothers, Kylie, Blur and Prodigy's 'Smack my Bitch up'. As the fourth single off a multi-platinum-selling album, he said, they had a very free hand with the video. And the band did not want to be in it. He also admitted that sometimes video's were made just to get the publicity. Also some video's had to be edited or re-shot before they could be broadcast. For instance, the Chemical Brothers 'Block Rockin' Beats' had the chasers armed originally, while the Verve's 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' originally ended with the singer being beaten up.

     Then the man from MTV said that he sees 60-70 videos a week. His choices to show us were firstly an Aphex Twin promo and then Madonna's 'Frozen. , (Very Gothic looking for the one-time Material Girl). These were both by Chris Cunningham. As head of the forth-coming M2 channel, he hoped to be able to show directors cuts and even programmes focusing on the work of a single director. The next choices were one by Daft Punk? - who's video started as a cooking demonstration and ended as a cop-show. The second here was by God Lives Underwater and had someone filmed eating which was then replayed backwards. Oh come on, how radical, the oldest trick in the can. His last two selections were from Cold Cut and EBN which both used video-sampling to create the tracks.

     When asked about getting into the industry, the advice was to send your demo-film to established companies. As 90% of videos are made by 15% of the directors, expect some disappointments. In the demo, you must have a good idea, and be very careful about picking the right track for you. The bloke from the Film Company said he'd be happy to see something shot on DV8 with a single light bulb, if it had a good idea. The general agreement seemed to be that videos would become more necessary when with DVD every track will have some visuals.